The Deception of the Emerald Ring

Chapter Six

The groom declined to carry the bride over the threshold.

He could not, however, refuse to offer his arm, not with three hundred wedding guests thronging around them, eagerly awaiting any further tidbit of gossip that might be gleaned from the occasion. To her credit, she didn't grab or cling. She didn't need to. The deed was done. The fatal words had been said. One "I do" apiece, to be precise. As they moved through the crowded rooms of Pinchingdale House toward the ballroom, where the wedding breakfast had been laid out with enough lobster patties to satisfy even the Prince of Wales, Geoff felt the light touch of Letty's fingers burning through his sleeve like a brand.

Mary hadn't attended the wedding. She had been unexpectedly called away to minister to a sick relative, although Geoff suspected it was more an exercise in tact than charity. The identity of the relative had already changed several times in the telling.

Next to him, Letty's hair whispered against the stiff lace ruffle that framed the back of her collar. From the corner of his eye, he caught a quick, frowning glance of the sort she had been sending him all morning. Geoff pretended he hadn't seen.

He would have liked to pretend her away altogether, but she was too corporeal to ignore. The faintly flowery fragrance of her hair mingled with the warm smell of clean skin taunted his nostrils with memory, and the plump shoulders revealed by the cut of her dress were already pink from the heat of the crowded room. A freckle perched right on the edge of her collarbone. The French, who, in the lazy days of the ancien rйgime had tended to name such things, would probably have given it a silly sort of name, like a "tatez-y," or a "touch here." It beckoned the eye as effectively as a well-fluttered fan.

As to where the eye was drawn…Given the standards of the Season, her bodice was modest, even prim, but from the angle at which Geoff was looking, it did little to conceal the lush expanse of flesh so faithfully outlined in the carriage two nights before. The same night she had so effectively laid her trap.

Geoff abruptly relocated his gaze. No matter how charmingly her freckles beckoned, it didn't change the fact that she was a scheming little opportunist who had ruined her own sister's happiness in her pursuit of social advancement. Whatever her allure, he despised her for her perfidy. And himself for his.

The object of his unpleasant meditations tugged lightly on his sleeve. Geoff allotted her the most perfunctory of glances. "Yes, my sweet?"

Letty frowned up at him with eyes as wide and blue as the summer sky and as treacherous as the sea.

"Could we please go someplace private?" she whispered.

Geoff smiled and nodded as someone he had never met before proffered insincere good wishes. "Eager to make sure we can't annul?" he asked pleasantly.

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, and when they did, Letty colored right up to her eyebrows. Her fingers tightened on his arm. "To talk."

"We have plenty of time for that." Deftly extracting his arm, Geoff brushed the back of Letty's hand with the merest pretense of a kiss. Pretense it might have been, but it still made Letty uncomfortably warm in a way that had nothing to do with the crush of people in the room. Over her knuckles, his gray eyes bored into hers. "Till death do us part, in fact. So if you will excuse me…"

His departure was so neatly done that Letty hardly saw it happen. One moment, his fingers had tightened on hers to the point of pain; the next, he was gone, leaving her standing alone at her own wedding reception in a breach of etiquette the size of Scotland.

Clearly, he was not in the mood to talk.

Snagging a glass of champagne off a tray, Letty tilted it recklessly back, coughing as the bubbles seared the back of her throat. Liquid overflowed her glass and splashed onto the hem of her hastily refurbished best dress as someone jostled into her from behind.

"All right there, my girl?"

With a glass of negus in his hand, his white hair rumpled and his glasses askew on his nose, her father looked to be enjoying himself immensely. Letty had never been quite so delighted to see one of her parents.

"It depends on what you mean by 'all right.'" Letty paused for a moment to consider. Her reputation was in tatters, she was irrevocably married to a man who was assiduously avoiding her, and she had just spilled champagne all over the hem of her best gown. "Actually, no."

"Good, good." Mr. Alsworthy patted her absently on the shoulder. "A splendid illustration of the human comedy, isn't it, my little Letty?"

"More farce than comedy," said Letty, taking refuge in another sip of champagne. Any drama of seduction and discovery that featured her in a leading role had to be farce. All that was needed was a jealous older husband and a comic serving wench hiding in a wardrobe.

"We have all the seven sins displayed before us in fine array," Mr. Alsworthy continued cheerfully, as though Letty hadn't spoken. He waved a hand at the groups of chattering people, the dripping champagne, and the young fop who had collapsed in a corner of the room and was being discreetly hauled by his feet through the double doors by a pair of liveried footmen. "Gluttony, sloth, vainglory, even a spot of lust."

"I think you missed a few," said Letty. "That was only four."

"I did miss out envy, didn't I? Your mother is quite outdone. I saw at least three ensembles sillier than hers in the music room alone." Mr. Alsworthy rubbed his thin hands together in contemplation of it.

As always, Letty marveled at her father's ability to be so easily diverted. Why couldn't she do that? Her predicament would be far easier if she could step back and view the chattering wedding guests from the lofty height of condescension, scorning their petty gossip and pitying their small-mindedness.

Of course, her father wasn't the one being invited by elderly rouйs to participate in the reproduction of salacious French prints.

"I would find it all more amusing if I weren't the object of it," said Letty bluntly.

Mr. Alsworthy patted her reassuringly on the arm. "Buck up, my girl. There will be a new scandal next week, and you will be all but forgotten."

"But I will still be married," pointed out Letty, lifting her glass again to her lips. The bubbles didn't hurt quite so much, and the sour liquid was beginning to spread a comforting warmth from her cheekbones straight back to her ears.

"Alas, so go we all eventually. It is an unenviable but inevitable part of the human condition." Mr. Alsworthy's eyes lit upon a portly gentleman who was dipping his cup directly into the punch. "Ah, that's where Marchmain got to! His recent letter in the Thinking Man's Monthly on the implications of that man Smith's theories was entirely misguided."

"Was it?" muttered Letty.

She should have known better than to seek reassurance from her father. After all, this was the man whose idea of comforting a child afraid of the dark was to explain Plato's allegory of shadows on the wall of the cave. As a strategy, it had worked better than one might have expected. The story had put her straight to sleep, mooting the entire question of monsters in the closet.

Unfortunately, she didn't think a misconceived marriage could be similarly bored away with an explanation of the wealth of nations, not unless she slept for a very long time, indeed.

Some of the strain in Letty's tone must have penetrated her father's philosophical fervor. Mr. Alsworthy paused a moment in his pursuit of greater truths to comfort his daughter in her time of need.

"In navigating the shoals of matrimony, my best advice to you, my dear," he said briskly, "is to invest in a subscription to the circulating library and a stout pair of earplugs."

"Your very best advice is earplugs?"

"Yes, earplugs. I favor wax, although a bit of wadded cloth will do, as well." His duty discharged, Mr. Alsworthy beamed at his daughter, set his spectacles more firmly on the bridge of his nose, and said, "Pardon me, my dear. I'm off to set Marchmain straight. The man doesn't know the first thing about the principles of political economy."

With a gleam in his eye not unknown to Roman Caesars and the more bloodthirsty sort of pugilist, Mr. Alsworthy set off for the punchbowl and his prey, leaving his daughter prey to another sort of emotion entirely.

Earplugs. Letty shook her head, a crooked little smile curving her frozen lips. She didn't think they would do very much good in her situation.

Taking a fresh glass from a footman's tray, Letty scanned the crowd for her errant husband. He was standing with one arm braced against the plinth of a statue of Daphne, deep in conversation with Miles Dorrington and his wife, Lady Henrietta. As Letty looked on, he arched an eyebrow and said something to Lady Henrietta that caused her to swat him with her fan, and Dorrington to fold his arms across his chest in a gesture of mock menace. Lord Pinchingdale's lips curved fondly, and he shook his head at Lady Henrietta's retaliatory rejoinder. Watching them, Letty wanted, painfully, to be part of that charmed circle of easy camaraderie. She wanted Lord Pinchingdale to bend his head attentively toward her, as he was toward Lady Henrietta, to lift a dark eyebrow at her, with a hint of a smile lurking about his lips to take the sting from the gesture.

Letty looked dubiously down into the trickle of liquid left in her glass. Goodness, the stuff must be stronger than she had realized, to make her go all mawkish over her husband's inattention.

Husband. How absurd that a flimsy web of words, hastily gabbled by a sleepy cleric, could transform a stranger into the closest sort of relation. Wasn't there supposed to be something more to it? Affection, understanding…Letty sighed, wrapping her gloved hands around the coolness of a fresh glass of champagne, wishing she could press it against her burning cheeks instead. At this point, she would have abandoned any hopes of undying devotion and settled for a simple, "Hello, how are you?" Even a friendly smile would do.

She didn't even know if he expected there to be a wedding night. A proper wedding night, that was, involving one bed and two bodies. One wasn't raised in the country without a fairly good notion of what that entailed.

Letty firmly squelched the memory of the interior of a dark carriage, of gloved hands in her hair and warm breath against her lips and a strong arm across her back, pressing her to him as though she could never possibly be close enough. Those moments hadn't been hers. They had been borrowed from Mary under false pretenses.

But that didn't mean they couldn't come to some sort of amiable understanding, did it? Now that they were bound till death did them part, under pain of thunderbolts, the only sensible thing was to accept what couldn't be changed and make the best of it. From what Letty had seen back in Hertfordshire, one didn't need grand passion and undying devotion to make a marriage, just a certain amount of goodwill and forbearance. And earplugs. Perhaps her father was more sagacious than she had given him credit for.

She would just walk up, pause next to them, and say, "Good evening, my lord." Just a simple little Good evening, my lord. How difficult could it be?

"Good evening, my lord," Letty muttered under her breath, taking a tentative step forward. She worked at arranging her stiff lips into a suitable sort of smile. Curve the lips, bend the head slightly, try not to break the stem of the champagne glass. "Good evening, my lord."

Still yards away, Lord Pinchingdale turned his head to say something to Lady Henrietta. His eyes caught on Letty's. The genial smile froze on his face. His spine straightened and his shoulders stiffened, leaving a cold stranger in the place of the smiling man who had stood there a moment before. There was more warmth in the marble statue behind him. Letty felt an answering chill settle across her own face, and she hastily looked away, her greeting turned to ashes on her tongue. Turning her back defiantly on the little grouping in the alcove, she pretended to be fascinated by the scrapings of the musicians on their plinth on the far side of the room.

"Poor girl," said Lady Henrietta Dorrington, a small furrow forming between her hazel eyes as she watched the transparent pantomime. "How dreadful for her this all is."

"Dreadful for her?" echoed Geoff incredulously. Christian charity was all very well and good, but that was taking it a bit too far.

Geoff scowled at Henrietta, who was making sympathetic faces at Letty's back. How did Letty get to be "poor girl," while he was cast as the villain of the piece? It wasn't as though he had climbed up through her window and hauled her off to have his wicked way with her. Geoff's conscience prodded him with the memory of that ill-advised kiss in the carriage. But that had been an accident. It wasn't as though he had meant to kiss her. Her as her, that was.

The devil with it! Geoff made a face of extreme annoyance. None of it, not the kiss, not this hideous party, not any of it, would have happened had Letty not been where she was decidedly meant not to be: in his carriage. And there was no reason for her to be in his carriage unless she had chosen to be there. In one fell swoop, she had deprived him of the right to marry as he chose, and a very large dollop of pride. She was about as pitiful as Napoleon Bonaparte.

And Henrietta was supposed to be his friend. What had happened to loyalty?

"May I point out that this poor, innocent creature happened to find her way into my carriage in the middle of the night? Your sympathy seems somewhat misplaced."

"These things happen to the best of us." Henrietta dismissed the point with a wave of her hand. "Think how terrifying it must be for her, forced into a loveless marriage with a man she barely knows."

Geoff raised an eyebrow at Henrietta. "I'm not sure I appreciate being cast as a fate worse than death."

Undaunted by the eyebrow, Henrietta shot Geoff a repressive glance. "Don't be silly. I didn't mean it literally."

"I'm immeasurably reassured."

"And don't go all supercilious and sarcastic," ordered Henrietta. "For heaven's sake, go talk to her. You can't avoid her forever."

"No, but he can try," contributed her husband cheerfully, leaning comfortably back against the wall. "It was a rum thing she did, you must admit."

"You"—Henrietta wagged a finger at her husband—"are not helping."

"I'm helping Geoff," explained Miles benignly.

"Such touching loyalty," murmured Geoff automatically, his eyes still on the small figure across the room.

"I thought so," agreed Miles.

"Didn't you recently promise something about forsaking all others and cleaving unto me?" demanded Henrietta of her husband.

Miles stretched complacently. "I don't think that was the kind of cleaving they were talking about, Hen."

Henrietta's cheeks pinkened. She hastily turned and gave Geoff a little push. "Shouldn't you be doing some cleaving of your own?"

"Later," Geoff prevaricated, thinking it might be a very good thing if all newlyweds were shunted off to an island somewhere until the initial phase of insufferable gooiness wore off. The fact that he was newly wed and not feeling the least bit gooey just made their cooing that much more annoying.

Sensing the need for masculine solidarity, Miles charged to the aid of his friend. "There's no rush. They do have the rest of their lives, you know."

"You do know how to cheer a fellow up, Dorrington."

"I try," said Miles modestly.

"Well, don't."

"Buck up, old chap. Forced marriages aren't all that bad." Miles gave his wife's waist a squeeze. Henrietta smiled up from under her lashes at Miles in a way that made Geoff's future seem even bleaker than it already did.

"Yes," Geoff agreed dryly, deliberately breaking into the tender moment, "but only when it's someone you want to marry."

Miles tugged at his cuffs. "I was hoping you would miss that bit."

"It was hardly likely to escape my notice."

"Give her a chance," urged Henrietta, adding, as though it settled everything, "I have always liked her."

"Hen," said Geoff wearily, "I appreciate your attempt to shove me into married bliss. I am happy you are happy. At present, I am not happy. And I am not going to be made any happier by your nagging at me. Can't we just leave it at that?"

The stubborn tilt of Henrietta's chin spoke more clearly than words.

Viewing it easier to deflect than to argue, Geoff turned to Miles. "If you have a moment, I need to discuss something with you."

"Something…" Miles indulged in an alarming series of facial contortions designed to imply clandestine activity. He mostly succeeded in looking like the victim of an unfortunate twitch.

"Something along those lines," agreed Geoff with a faint smile, feeling some of the hard knot of bitterness lodged in his chest loosen a bit. Even the best of romances might wither eventually, but friends…those lasted. He had his friends and he had his work, and in the grand scheme of things, while his pride still smarted at how easily he had been duped, he was still luckier than most.

Naturally, he couldn't express any of that to Miles, at least not without giving him a thorough drubbing at the same time, so he simply inclined his head toward the ballroom doors, and said, "If you'd like to join us, Hen?"

Henrietta shook her head. "Letty has been accosted by the Ponsonbys. And since someone ought to rescue her…" With a reproachful glance at Geoff and a kiss blown to her husband, she was gone, moving purposefully toward the far end of the ballroom.

"Do you think we ought to help Hen rout the vultures?" asked Miles, tilting his head in the direction of his wife.

Geoff's face hardened at the memory of Percy's appearance the other night, the final tug on a trap he had been fool enough not to realize was tightening around him.

"No," he said, steering his friend out of the room. "Under the circumstances, I'd say the Ponsonbys and my wife are most likely happily engaged in an orgy of mutual congratulation. Let's leave them to it, shall we?"

"Well," said Mrs. Ponsonby, leaning her powdered cheeks uncomfortably close to Letty's. "You have made a spectacle of yourself, haven't you?"

There was really no justice, reflected Letty, in being accused of being a spectacle by someone who had seen fit to cram no fewer than three peacock feathers into her frazzled coiffure. The stem of the central one had broken, and the unmoored eye bobbed in Letty's direction like the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale's infamous lorgnette.

"I wasn't without help," said Letty, thinking of Percy. The Lord had been clearly having an off day when he created the Ponsonbys. Percy was dim, Lucy insufferable, and Mrs. Ponsonby…Letty could only describe her as an unfortunate cross between Grendel's mother and Lady Macbeth.

Mrs. Ponsonby flicked closed her impossibly feathery fan and regarded Letty with extreme displeasure. "You, of all people!"

Letty knew that roughly translated as: An insignificant little thing like you!

"How could you?" admonished Mrs. Ponsonby. "Stealing your dear, dear sister's beau like that!"

Translation: Why you and not Lucy?

"Poor Mary," sighed Lucy, getting in a bit of a gloat at the expense of her prettier, more popular friend. "How humiliating for her."

Letty and her sister might not always be on the best of terms, but she certainly wasn't going to let Lucy Ponsonby stick her hypocritical little claws into her. "Mary has assured me that her affections are attached elsewhere," lied Letty stoutly.

In fact, what Mary had said was, "Now that you've pinched Pinchingdale I shall have to bring someone else up to scratch within the Season," but Letty didn't see the need to elaborate.

"Putting on a brave face, no doubt." Mrs. Ponsonby's bosom filled with pleased pity. "But for Mary to lose her beau—to you! Who would have ever thought it!"

"Who, indeed?" tittered Lucy.

She directed a telling look at Letty's gingery hair, which was, as usual, escaping its pins. Letty caught herself tucking the stray wisp behind her ear, and forced herself to stop.

Lowering her hand to her side, she leveled a long, hard look at Lucy, with her pretty face and discontented mouth and her dresses as fussy as the dressmaker could be persuaded to make them. Lucy had been on the marriage market for even longer than Mary, never quite seeming to grasp that her titters and flutters drove men away, even as Mary's beauty attracted them. For over a year, Letty had been forced to endure Lucy's jabs about her dress, her hair, her clothes, a million little snubs under the guise of being "helpful" to Mary's younger sister. And since there was nothing she could say without looking a shrew or causing a fuss, Letty had curbed her naturally blunt tongue and let Lucy jab.

Not anymore.

In a voice that sounded strange to her own ears, Letty said, "You're just upset that you didn't think of it yourself."

Lucy's mouth fell open in an entirely unflattering and gratifying way, and two round pink spots formed on her cheekbones. "Well, I never!"

"No, you didn't," agreed Letty, deciding that there were advantages to being ruined. "But it wasn't for lack of trying. I saw the way you tried to get Lord Pinchingdale out on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball. If you could have stolen him from Mary, you would have in a minute."

"I don't know how you can say such things," fumbled Lucy, tugging at the edges of her gloves in her anxiety. "Mama!"

"Because it's true," said Letty calmly. "You don't think Mary didn't realize? She found it amusing. Because she knew you couldn't possibly be a threat."

Lucy recoiled as though slapped.

Mrs. Ponsonby turned an alarming puce that contrasted unfortunately with her Nile-green frock. "Young lady…," she blustered.

Letty lifted her head high and looked Mrs. Ponsonby levelly in the eye, buoyed by champagne and a year's worth of pent-up indignation. In a voice as quiet as it was deadly, Letty asked, "Don't you mean, 'my lady'?"

Those two simple words proved too much for Mrs. Ponsonby.

"Lucy! We are leaving this house of…of…ill repute!" Mrs. Ponsonby grabbed her daughter, who was still desperately trying to explain to no one in particular just how Lord Pinchingdale had come to be on the balcony at the Middlethorpes' ball, and swung her in a wide circle.

Turning, she fired one last parting salvo at Letty. "You may be a viscountess, but you shall never be received in my house again!"

"I shall look forward to that," said Letty.

Behind her, Letty heard the low, rhythmic sound of someone clapping. Startled, she twisted around to find Lady Henrietta Dorrington, hazel eyes alight with glee, watching the retreating Ponsonby party with no little satisfaction.

"Well done!" applauded Henrietta. "I've been waiting for something like that for years. She looks just like a turtle from the back in all that green, doesn't she?"

Letty returned her smile, clasping her hands around the stem of her glass to stop them shaking. "I don't think I'm going to receive an invitation to Mrs. Ponsonby's next Venetian breakfast."

"Do you think if I stand conspicuously next to you, she'll stop inviting me, too?" asked Henrietta hopefully. "I would so love to be snubbed."

"Don't say that," said Letty soberly, feeling the energy that had buoyed her through her confrontation with Mrs. Ponsonby beginning to ebb away. "It isn't nearly as enjoyable as one might think. Except by the Ponsonbys," she added, with a valiant attempt at a smile.

Henrietta, who had only escaped a similar fate through the felicity of having committed her own indiscretions in another country—and the machinations of a mother whose ability to manipulate public opinion put Bonaparte's agents to shame—made a sympathetic face.

"I'm sorry. If there is anything I can do to help…"

Letty felt unaccustomed tears prick her lids, and blinked them quickly away. Aside from her father's advice on earplugs, Henrietta's was the first kindly meant statement she had heard all day. At least, the first kindly meant statement that was truly kindly meant, when one discounted all the double-edged barbs that began with "you poor, dear child," and inevitably ended with cheering comments about ways in which she might possibly atone for her disgrace—at some point in her declining years.

"I hadn't thought you would want to speak to me," Letty admitted. "You were friends with Lord Pinchingdale long before you knew me. And he can barely bear to speak to me after all that happened."

"What did happen?" asked Henrietta. "I certainly can't believe that either you or Geoff would behave in the way the scandal sheets claim."

"You've seen those?"

Henrietta looked a little guilty. "I only read them for the articles."

"Ah, Hen! There you are!" A large form bounded up, slinging an arm around Henrietta with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet. Letty prudently moved a step away. Belatedly noticing Letty, Miles mustered an unenthusiastic, "Oh, hullo."

"Where is Geoff?" demanded Henrietta, as Letty contemplated the best way to quietly fade into the background.

Miles tweaked one of his wife's curls. "You're meddling again, aren't you?"

"And you're trying to change the subject," riposted Henrietta, grabbing Letty by the arm before Letty could slip away. "Don't worry. Geoff will thank me for this later. Where is he?"

"It's a little difficult to say."

Henrietta just looked at him.

"Oh, all right! Geoff is…gone."

"You mean he's gone out?" ventured Letty, automatically turning to look at the door of the ballroom.

"I suppose you could say that," mumbled Miles, studying his own reflection in the polished tips of his boots.

"To his club?" Letty prompted. All gentlemen had clubs, even her absentminded father. She doubted theirs was the same club, since the one to which her father belonged featured a membership on the older side of sixty, chiefly known for their ability to hold a paper steady and doze at the same time.

"Er, no," said Miles. He cast a look of wordless entreaty to his wife.

Not having the slightest idea what he was entreating, Henrietta returned the look with interest, and more than a touch of exasperation. "And?"

"He's gone away," elaborated Miles, looking slightly hunted. He gestured helplessly with his hands. "Really away. Away, away."

"Away, away?" repeated Letty.

"What is that supposed to mean?" demanded Henrietta.

Miles contemplated the floor. "It means," said Miles, looking uncomfortably from Letty to his wife and back again, "that Geoff has gone to Ireland."